KNOT: A Wake Family Novel Read Online Free PDF

spent my last balmy Christmas on the Pacific Coast. I was ready for the change. I’d been in one place long enough.
    Time to move on.
    Chicago wasn’t much different from L.A. I could buy anything I wanted. I could eat the best foods money could offer. I knew a few people in the area, and since Janel and Ives were already relocated there, I could tag along with them socially. Another reason I was so dead set on Illinois.
    Janel had been my best friend since our first year in college, and I’d introduced her to Ives when she’d come with me to Zurich, where my father lived. I loved them both, and I was happy they found happiness with each other.
    They’d even be at the Harbor in Chicago on Friday for the party. Coincidentally, Ives worked for the corporation who was throwing it.
    I welcomed the change of pace. New places to see and faces to learn. Janel and Ives—newlyweds, but still active in the lifestyle —knew firsthand what I was into. Soon, I’d find company to keep in the middle of the country, just as I’d done on the Pacific Coast when I moved from Aspen, where I grew up for the most part.
    It would take some patience, but what hurry was I in? And since when had I even had the time to socialize, in any capacity, anyway? I’d been too focused on work.
    I checked off the last item on my to-do list and decided to relax for the last few minutes of my night. After all of my work things were put away, I slipped into my pajamas, grabbed the extra blanket I’d had sent up and a pillow off the bed, and then settled down in the chair.
    The hotel bed was huge, and no doubt more spacious, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get any viable sleep there.
    I was a chair kind of girl when staying in a hotel. Any hotel. Even one of mine.
    I’d never slept well in a bed that big. The world was lonely enough without all the extra leg room and empty mattress.
    I picked up my book from the table where I’d left it the night before, slid out the bookmark and started reading.
    Appetizers. That made me happy.
    I’d never gotten into fiction. It was too much of a commitment. Demanded too much emotion. Horror books freaked me out—I’ll die having never watched a scary movie. Romance was too predictable and unrealistic. Crime? No thanks.
    Cookbooks were my chosen guilty pleasure. The decadence without any of the guilt. The variety made appetizers, in particular, my favorite. There were no rules with that type of food, and even things you wouldn’t think to pair together made something unique and different. Something unexpected and delicious, at least in the perfectly proportioned amount.
    A little of this. A little of that. A lot like my sex life.
    I suppose it’s no surprise, small bite-sized teasers and samples excited me. I could try anything; whatever my heart desired. Have a taste of it all.
    Why anyone ever tried to live a satisfied life having the same thing for dinner every night made no sense to me. It sounded so depressing.
    There was no question where my thoughts on commitment, whether it be food or relationships, came from.
    Vivian Suzanne Maxwell-Stout-Jennings-Howe-Potter-Davis. My mother.
    She and I were alike, I’ll give her that. It must have been genetic, but unlike her, I was aware of the truth. Aware of our tendencies. She knew but tried to hide it.
    Whatever. She had to live her life.
    What did I know about wearing someone else’s shoes?
    If she was happy with the choices she made, then I could be happy with mine. Where she paired off with everyone, knowing there was no exclusive soulmate out there, I paired with no one. Pairing off wasn’t my thing.
    She insisted that she could fall in love over and over, but I think we both knew it was never about love. It was about what her man of the moment could buy her. Where he could take her. Who she could rub elbows with, and eventually find the next man up for grabs.
    I didn’t subscribe to her methods, but her logic was true enough. There wasn’t one person